01-07-2025
Australian teen faced six surgeries in just two years
A young woman who had a cancer so rare that her GP had never seen a case of it in person before is revealing the gruelling six surgeries she endured to treat it.
Tessa McHugh, now 25, was in PE class in Year 10 when she was bumped during the lesson, prompting persistent pain in the side of her upper arm and shoulder.
'It felt like an insignificant bump but the pain was really bad. I went home and told Mum, who had a look and noticed there was a really large, hard lump on the back of my shoulder blade,' Ms McHugh told
The Adelaide teenager's mother took her to the GP the next day, who mentioned he'd never seen anything like it before. She was sent for an X-ray, an ultrasound and a CT.
'It was then I was sent back to the GP and told it was likely cancer but there wasn't a lot of detail,' she said.
At 16, she had both of her parents with her. She knew something wasn't right but when she was told it was likely cancer it was very 'confronting and overwhelming'.
'It almost felt like an out of body experience. It's very difficult to explain because it's not something you'd ever assume you'd hear,' she said.
She was soon admitted to the Women and Children's hospital, where she underwent a biopsy and discovered she had Stage 2 Chrondosarcoma — something her GP had never seen in-person before. Ms McHugh herself had never heard of sarcoma before.
It's a bone sarcoma that develops in cartilage cells, and is resistant to treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. It is typically seen in older adults.
She had to wait six weeks from her diagnosis to her first surgery in January 2016 — just before she was set to start Year 11. The 'invasive' surgery went well, and all signs of the tumour were removed. There were a few complications with the wound, with doctors at first thinking the tumour had returned. It resulted in two additional surgeries that same year.
She was having scans every three months to monitor any potential recurrences, and heartbreakingly in December that year doctors found one. She had another surgery to remove the new tumour.
Things were looking positive for the next nine months, and Ms McHugh was still having scans every three months. But, again, it was looking like another tumour was developing.
'That was a bit of a waiting game, where they could see there was something tumour-like on the scans but couldn't confirm because the biopsy they tried to do was not successful,' she said.
'Again, it was a four to six-week wait and they confirmed it was definitely the cancer. That was another really invasive surgery where they removed part of my shoulder joint and put surgical mesh in to keep as much function of my arm as they could.
'It was just three months after that I had another recurrence — my third since the original tumour.'
She had yet another surgery, totalling six surgeries in two years plus two biopsies.
Each of the surgeries impacted the function of her shoulder, with the first seeing a lot of her scapula and the muscles surrounding it removed. This was compounded by the surgery that saw the mesh put into her arm. Over the two years, she wore a sling for approximately nine months. She managed to adapt, working with her physio.
During this time, Ms McHugh was determined to try to keep life as normal as possible — meaning when she was well enough, she was at school. She said her teachers were incredibly supportive about what she was going through.
'I was in denial for quite a long time, that was a protective factor. Although there were all these physical things that I was going through in terms of my health — but also my mental health,' she said.
'It was really hard trying to navigate being a teenager alongside a cancer diagnosis, and it being so rare that people don't often know about it or understand it. I also looked relatively well the whole time because I had surgeries, I was young and otherwise healthy and managed to recover quite well from the surgeries that it didn't really stand out that I did have cancer.'
It's been close to a decade since Ms McHugh was first diagnosed, and she has been in remission for seven years, getting scans every year. She's now a provisional psychologist, and still sees her physiotherapist once a month.
She is still always very mindful about how she uses her arm and shoulder.
'I've just started studying for my Masters of Psychology, which has been very exciting and busy, and I work as a provisional psychologist with children,' the university student said.
Ms McHugh is sharing her story as part of Sarcoma Awareness Month.
'When people hear about these different types of cancers, it not only supports an increase of funding and research around it, but also raises people's awareness in case people experience it as well so they know some of those earlier signs,' she said.
'I was 16 at the time I was diagnosed, I guess I had this unconscious perception of what it looked like when someone was diagnosed with cancer and so for me one of the biggest challenges was because it was rare and so different.
'One of the common associations with cancer is that the interventions are often chemotherapy or radiotherapy. It is important to recognise that there are many different interventions for cancer, and that everyone's experience is going to be different.'
